“Will Support Fundamental R&D That Transforms Ability to Forecast Pandemic-scale Events, Detect Outbreaks Early, and Respond Efficiently.” The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on the country, exposing our lack of preparedness and knowledge gaps in handling such events and understanding pathogens and disease emergence. NSF’s Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) initiative focuses on fundamental research and development activities needed to tackle grand challenges in infectious disease pandemics through prediction and prevention. The PIPP Phase II Centers Program builds upon Phase I Development Grant Program  to establish a network of centers or large-scale awards/investments that will support interdisciplinary team-based approaches to accelerate research and development activities in emerging infectious diseases and […]

The Computing Research Association (CRA), in consultation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), has appointed five new members to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council:  Kevin Butler, University of Florida Daniel Rockmore, Dartmouth College Julie Shah, Massachusetts Institute of Technology  Michela Taufer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Adam Wierman, California Institute of Technology Beginning July 1, the new members will each serve three-year terms. The CCC Council is composed of 23 members who have expertise in diverse areas of computing. They are instrumental in leading CCC’s visioning programs, which help catalyze and enable ideas for future computing research. Members serve staggered three-year terms that rotate every July. The CCC and CRA […]

Originally posted to the CRA Bulletin As part of its mission to develop the next generation of leaders in the computing research community, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announces the sixth offering of the CRA-CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. We seek nominations for participants. LiSPI will be centered around a two-day workshop to be held November 16-17th, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Full details of LiSPI are available here) LiSPI will feature presentations and discussions with science policy experts, current and former Hill staff, and relevant agency and Administration personnel about the […]

Originally posted by Brian Mosley on the Computing Research Policy Blog In our continuing series of posts on the Biden Administration’s Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) budget request, we turn to the National Science Foundation. As he has done the past two years, President Biden proposes a strong budget for NSF, doubling down on the Chips and Science Act and the historic budget increase the agency received in the FY23 Omnibus. Under the Administration’s FY24 plan, NSF would see a 14 percent increase compared to the FY23 Omnibus. NSF would go from $9.90 billion in FY23 to $11.3 billion in FY24, an increase of $1.40 billion. A large part of that increase would go into Research […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is pleased to release the Mechanism Design for Improving Hardware Security Workshop Report. On August 24-25, 2022, the CCC held a visioning workshop on Mechanism Design for Improving Hardware Security in Washington, D.C. Led by Simha Sethumadhavan and Tim Sherwood, the workshop brought together experts in hardware and software security, economics, and government policy to investigate ways to improve the design and uptake of hardware security mechanisms.  With the increasing pervasiveness of hardware in society, comes a parallel increase in hardware security concerns. Recent hardware attacks such as Spectre and Meltdown demonstrate just how devastating and dangerous these attacks can be. With the availability of […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will hold a webinar for their proposal solicitation “Safe-Learning Enabled Systems” on April 5th, 2023, 1:00-2:00 PM Eastern Time. Webinar Synopsis: As artificial intelligence (AI) systems rapidly increase in size, acquire new capabilities, and are deployed in high-stakes settings, their safety becomes extremely important. Ensuring system safety requires more than improving accuracy, efficiency, and scalability: it requires ensuring that systems are robust to extreme events, and monitoring them for anomalous and unsafe behavior.   The objective of the Safe Learning-Enabled Systems program, which is a partnership between the National Science Foundation, Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures, is to foster foundational research that leads to the […]